


Things Left Unsaid

by OccasionalStorytelling



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Blood and Violence, Cardassians with tails, Eventual Happy Ending, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Julian Bashir, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26790532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalStorytelling/pseuds/OccasionalStorytelling
Summary: After the end of the Dominion War, Julian Bashir and Elim Garak went their separate ways. Julian left DS9 and travelled the quadrant, splitting his time between sight-seeing and occasionally providing medical assistance to people in need. Garak returned to Cardassia Prime, with a fancy title as “Ambassador to the Federation” and the willingness to put in the work to rebuild his home. They kept in touch, sending letters back and forth across the galaxy, until Garak sent a letter that might have been a little TOO flirtatious…and Julian went missing before he could write back. Garak is ready to call in every favor he’s ever earned in order to find his doctor. Somewhere in the vastness of space, Julian has been kidnapped. The only question is whether or not Garak will be able to find him in time to save him.Updates on pause due to schoolwork
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Things Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Back in 2015, I published a story called I Need to Tell You. It's still up if you scroll far enough back in my profile (but please don't, because it's not good). I made it about 7,000 words in before I left it incomplete and untouched for five years. Things have changed, and I've changed, and I decided I want to tell this story for REAL this time. Welcome to Things Left Unsaid, the realization of a dream my younger self could only imagine.
> 
> Characters named with assistance from the following Star Trek name generator:  
> https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/star_trek.html  
> Cardassian language sourced from tinsnip and Vyc’s English-Kardasi dictionary version 0.6.1, at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wcj3iYdWofb3Q5WHU1Y3Q3dzA/view

**[accessing deleted files]**

**[1 outgoing draft found]**

**[message begins]**

~~**Dear Garak, I can hardly believe you really** ~~

~~**Keep it together, Julian. You can do this.** ~~

~~**My Dear Garak: I can’t help but notice that in your previous letter, you** ~~

**[portions of message unreadable due to overlapping images commonly associated with Human “doodling.” recognizable image patterns: Cardassian scales]**

~~**Hi, Garak. It’s me. No more lies, no more games…did you really mean it?** ~~

**[message ends]**

The kid in the Federation uniform looked up at Garak. “That’s all we could recover from the hardrive, sir,” he said.

Garak sat in a Federation office in San Francisco on a cold, overcast day. It was the kid’s “office.” The kid was a fresh Starfleet-academy graduate, clearly on his first assignment at Starfleet Headquarters. He was combing through half-corrupted shuttle records with clumsy hands, all “yes sir” and “no sir” and no personality beyond those phrases. He’d introduced himself with a stiff salute, and Garak had promptly forgotten his name.

“May I borrow your office for a few moments?” Garak smiled politely, the perfect image of an ambassador. The kid stood at attention and saluted. Garak sighed, and gave an exasperated wave to dismiss him. The kid scurried out of the room, leaving Garak alone. Garak had half a mind to find someone to complain to. The ambassador from the Federation’s newest and most fragile member comes to Starfleet Headquarters asking for assistance, and he’s sent to a _child_ for help? That kid couldn’t have been more than a year out of the academy, he was practically as young as Julian had been when he was assigned to DS9.

Garak, on the other hand, was old, much older than he’d ever expected to be. Spies tend to have limited usefulness, and their shelf-life was short. Following that metaphor, Garak was an expired can of rations still tucked away, though most of his peers were long-since disposed of. Garak rubbed his fingers up and down the ride of his nose, a habit he’d picked up when stressed. He pinched at the scales connecting his nose to the eyebrow ridge, and it hurt. He kept going anyway. _I really need to stop this,_ Garak thought. _Raiding Julian’s PADD? What am I thinking?_ Julian hadn’t been missing for more than a week. Two weeks, at the most. That wasn’t too long a time. Garak had guessed there might not be any useful information in the remains of Julian’s private effects, but he’d had them searched anyway. Now that the kid was out of the room, Garak cracked his knuckles, turned the air conditioner up to 82ºF, and got to work examining the files himself, to make sure there was nothing the kid had missed.

According to the mission report of the Starfleet vessel Cromwell, they found Federation shuttle wreckage scattered across a populated space route. According to their analysis, there was no organic matter in the debris, which they interpreted to mean that the passengers and crew had escaped somehow, or possibly been captured, as, according to the logs, sensors recorded a ship decloaking on the port bow before they went dead. The Cromwell submitted a list of missing persons compiled from the ship’s records, and Starfleet published this list, along with an insistence that they were doing everything they could to find survivors of the accident. The new of the other ship was not made public knowledge.

Doctor Julian Subatoi Bashir was on the list. Garak had a news-alert set up, scanning for Julian’s name in the latest scientific papers and other such items, and so, he learned of the shuttle accident. He read the report, and did some private digging of his own, only to discover several unpublished details, such as the matter of the decloaking ship, and that Starfleet had merely asked all vessels to “keep an eye out” for the missing people, rather than sending a search team. That very day, Garak left Cardassia Prime in his private vessel. It was small, but it was fast, and it had a cloaking device if he needed it. Three days later, he arrived at the Deep Space 9 station. Julian had left some personal effects there, and Garak collected them, checking them for clues and storing them on his own ship in case Julian wanted them after he was found.

When he was found. _If_ he was found. If he hadn’t been kidnapped. Not a soul at Starfleet suspected something like that (even in their private mission reports, which Garak had examined), but this just didn’t feel _right_ to him. It was the perfect setup to kidnap a political rival or “loose end,” and there was no one else on the shuttle with quite so many travels as Julian, and Julian _was_ sometimes prone to making enemies, and abrasive in a way Humans didn’t appreciate… the point was, the shuttle “accident” was executed to perfection. Garak couldn’t have planned it better if _he_ was the one trying to kidnap Julian. And Garak just couldn’t shake the feeling that Julian _had_ been kidnapped. And he didn’t get to be alive this long by ignoring his hunches, so he was going to perform his _own_ search for Julian.

It was possible, Garak worried, that Julian had been kidnapped by Section 31. Even Garak had difficulties tracking that organization, but Julian had continually thrown himself into their clutches in various misguided attempts to “take them down,” as he put it. It was possible that Julian had made some new enemy in his travels, and had been kidnapped by, oh, perhaps the Orion Syndicate, or some other half-assembled mob that Julian had tried to meddle with. Julian was always a fan of meddling, Garak reflected unhappily.

It was also entirely possible that perhaps Julian had vanished of his own free will, not kidnapped, but running away. Maybe the pressure and stigma of being “out” as genetically engineered had grown to much for him. Maybe he’d found some ridiculous project on a random planet, and he was going to live there as a hermit until he cured some horrible virus plaguing the innocent people there. Maybe he’d run away for a different reason entirely…and if he’d run away, he was fine. If Julian had run away, he was fine, and he wasn’t captured, or hurt, or dead…

Garak had too much training to ignore the possibility that Julian was already dead. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stay focused on finding Julian rather than just worrying about finding him, and he felt a soft _snap_ in between his finger and thumb. He’d accidentally pinched off one of the scales between his eyebrow ridge and his nose. A thin trickle of blood dripped down into his eye. _Wonderful,_ Garak thought sarcastically. Now he’d have to clean himself up before the kid came back.

He was supposed to be on Cardassia Prime, organizing an agriculture development. Instead, he was in San Francisco, where it was entirely too cold, and he was fiddling with his scales like an anxious child.

He could barely focus. He’d always had a gift for compartmentalizing his feelings, but he hadn’t been able to focus in days, not since he’d sent that love letter.

It was one letter among uncounted numbers Garak and Julian had sent back and forth. And by Human standards, it wasn’t even really a love letter. Of course, by Cardassian standards, it was a ridiculously sappy letter, obviously communicating romantic intentions. Garak might as well have proposed marriage, it would have been less soul-baring-ly embarrassing. But in all likelihood, Julian hadn’t noticed the nature of the letter. Poor, sweet, oblivious Julian would have seen nothing out of the ordinary, just a normal letter of the sort a friend would send to another. Julian couldn’t have noticed.

Only, according to the deleted files in Julian’s PADD, he _had_ noticed something. So it was entirely possible (though entirely unpleasant) that Julian had run away because he had finally realized how Garak truly felt about him, and he didn’t feel the same way. It was entirely possible that Julian was specially running away from Garak, and here Garak was, reading through his personal data files like a stalker.

Garak read the deleted file again. Julian _had_ noticed something amiss, but it looked like he’d been about to write back. He seemed almost happy, too, the way Julian got starry-eyed and doodled all over his napkins when he was in the midst of some new crush. And Julian wouldn’t run away from Garak, Julian was _all_ about having “honest conversations” and “talking about your feelings.” The best conclusion Garak could come to from all the available information was that Julian been kidnapped, and was being held somewhere against his will.

Garak realized that he hadn’t moved for a little while when he noticed a drop of his blood hit the carpet. Garak frantically wiped at his forehead with a sleeve, but the missing scale would be all-too-obvious for a day or two until it grew back. But now there was blood on the carpet in a Starfleet office. It would be cleaned, and rumors would spread that the Cardassian ambassador had done something horrible just before coming here, that Garak had tortured someone and then walked into Starfleet Headquarters before even cleaning himself up. Garak could only hope Julian wouldn’t believe such rumors, if he heard them.

If he was in a place where he _could_ hear rumors from Starfleet, and he wasn’t kidnapped in some random location. Or dead.

_You may be kidnapped in some random location,_ Julian thought to himself, _but at least you’re not dead. It could be worse, right?_

He was in a dark room, but he was handcuffed to a chair in the center of a spotlight. His eye itched where blood dripped down into it from the cut on his forehead. It was uncomfortably warm, which was only exacerbated by the thick wooly clothes he’d been wearing when the shuttle was attacked, and which he was still wearing, now several days old and developing a smell. There was some relief from the heat, in that his civvies now bore huge rips in the fabric around his shoulders and wrists, due to the attack and the cuffs.

The light shining in his eyes made it hard to see very much in the darkness of the room, but he could make our cameras watching him from the corners of the ceiling. Julian had also done a little experiment. He shifted slightly in his chair, and watched as the darkness in front of him shifted too. He wasn’t alone. There was someone sitting not six feet away from him, and he couldn’t see who it was.

After the shuttle’s warp field was disabled, the attackers had opted to flood the ship with a neurotoxin of some kind rather than send a boarding party. Julian had fought it as long as he could, but he was knocked unconscious, and that had screwed up his normally-perfect sense of time. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. All he knew was that when he woke up in this chair in the spotlight, his face was starting to get scratchy with stubble that he couldn’t itch.

Julian fumbled with the cuffs behind his back, testing them to see if he could break them. The answer seemed, at first attempt, to be a resounding “no.” Julian waited as long as he could stand to see if his “companion” was going to speak, before he couldn’t hold back anymore.

“Do you _actually_ want me alive, or am I supposed to die of boredom?” Julian sighed, the very picture of snarky sarcasm. “This is the part where you explain what you want from me. _Please_ tell me you’re not waiting to “soften me up,” Julian continued. He tried to regulate his breathing, keep his heartbeat as steady as possible. He was never a very good actor, but he wasn’t going to show how scared he was. The figure in the dark remained motionless, silent, and out of sight.

“I won’t soften up, so we might as well start now,” Julian said. “This is quite comfortable compared to how the Changelings treat their prisoners.”

“You would prefer to be less comfortable?” The figure finally spoke, in a low, threatening growl. “That can be arranged.”

Julian shuddered. _This is no time to antagonize your kidnappers,_ he thought. _The only thing securing you right now is the cuffs, so the_ ** _last_** _thing you need is an injury that would prevent you from making an escape attempt._ “Sorry. This is fine, thank you,” Julian mumbled, then promptly shut up. He tested the handcuffs again, flexing his shoulders. With the right pressure, he might be able to loosen them just a little. The figure in the dark continued to watch him.

“This is _not_ “fine,” thank you,” Gark seethed. The kid had returned to his office with a message that admiral Corvin Slayton wanted to meet with Garak regarding the shuttle accident. Garak had promptly joined the admiral in _his_ office, where Slayton informed Garak that he was dreadfully sorry, but the search for the shuttle accident victims (including Julian Bashir) was being called off.

“I would hope a man such as yourself would understand the difficulties of allocating Starfleet resources,” Slayton said. “I assure you, though our ships are resuming their normal activities, every one of them is scanning for the lost passengers.”

Garak wanted to lean over the desk, wrap his tail around Admiral Slayton’s throat and tell him to find his _vrell mitkaderb_ before Garak murdered Slayton brutally and in ways with long-lasting political consequences, but years of concealing his true feelings paid off as he prepared a statement that would get _results._

“Admiral,” Garak smiled, showing off his pointed teeth in a move calculated to unnerve any Human, “I seem to recall that when my people joined the Federation, we were told that Starfleet never leaves an officer behind. Has this policy changed in the months since Cardassia joined your ranks? Or has this particular case merely been deemed exempt?” Garak raised an eyebrow and drew himself up to his full height. He gave Slayton a look usually reserved for prisoners in interrogations.

Slayton coughed awkwardly and fiddled with his collar. “Mr. Garak, we—“

“ _Ambassador_ Garak,” Garak continued to smile in a charade of politeness. “Please use my title, Admiral. Sometimes it seems to me titles are all we civilized races have to demonstrate our mutual respect for each other,” Garak chuckled quietly, staring Slayton down.

_“Ambassador,”_ Slayton puffed up, “I assure you, Starfleet’s polices have not changed. And the Federation is committed to providing aid to help your people rebuild their home and defend themselves from the last of the Jem’Hadar…”

Garak was going to scream if this went on much longer. He allowed himself to indulge in a fantasy of going through with Slayton’s murder as the admiral continued to talk.

“…and frankly, Ambassador, your friend Bashir was a Genny anyway. It would be a waste of time to dedicate any more resources to—“

Garak slammed his fist on the table, stopping Slayton in the middle of his sentence. Slayton flinched, and stepped just slightly away as Garak stood back up, anger clearly visible on his face. Garak took a deep breath. He smoothed down his hair with one hand. He closed his eyes, and opened them. Slayton grimaced. Garak could see he was visibly shaken, and starting to sweat. Garak smiled.

“My apologies. I though that Starfleet was a little more _civilized_ than that. Resorting to name-calling…I was certain you’d moved past the discrimination against…” and here Garak paused, to let Slayton fill in the blanks. _Discrimination against Cardassians._ “…against genetically enhanced individuals, and other at-risk populations,” Garak tacked on an even-more obvious lead. There could be no subtlety in dealing with humans, they just weren’t equipped for it.

Slayton hesitated for a moment, not-quite getting the point Garak was driving at. “Ambassador, surely you know that Bashir was almost stripped of his doctoring license when he was outed as genetically engineered,” Slayton said, confused.

Garak kept himself as calm as he could. _Pretend you don’t care. Pretend you don’t care at all for Julian with his sentimental nature and pleasing smile and absolute lack of grace…put that away. Pretend you are a Cardassian Ambassador to the Federation, and nothing more._ Garak smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I understand completely. Thank you for this useful lesson in how the Federation treats its _components_ when they are found unworthy,” Garak sighed, turning to leave.

He walked slowly to the door, giving Slayton time to figure it out. Cardassia was the Federation’s newest member, and its position was the most tenuous. This conversation wasn’t about finding one kidnapped doctor, it was about proving that the Federation cared about its relationship with Cardassia. _Referencing “name-calling” was a particularly clever move,_ Garak congratulated himself. The derogatory slang term “Cardys” still ran rampant through the Human population of the quadrant. If Slayton could only connect this conversation with the Federation’s attempts to appease Cardassia Prime’s fears, the search for Julian would continue, and no one could accuse Garak of untoward favoritism for a particular Human. The public figure that was “Ambassador Garak” would never care about a Federation nobody, but he _would_ use a Federation nobody as a metaphor for his own selfish ends. Garak’s hand reached for the sensor that would open the door.

“My apologies, sir,” the admiral said, flushing with embarrassment. “I misunderstood what you meant. We will do everything in our power to protect _all_ Federation citizens. We will redirect a ship to continue searching for the lost shuttle passengers.”

Garak nodded politely. “See that you do, admiral,” Garak smiled. He stalked out of the office and marched directly to the nearest transporter pad. He needed to get back to his ship. It seemed that if Julian was going to be rescued, Garak would have to do it himself.

**Author's Note:**

> "Vrell mitkaderb" is supposed to be Cardassian for "pretty flower," a cute pet name Garak would NEVER call Julian to his face.
> 
> Fun fact, I have a tumblr! Check me out at occasionalstorytelling.tumblr.com and feel free to interact.  
> In the bio of that tumblr, you will also find a link to buy me a kofi, if you're interested in supporting me.  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
